I do and I don't

"From one of our leading film historians and interpreters: a brilliantly researched, irresistibly witty, delightfully illustrated examination of "the marriage movie": what it is (or isn't) and what it has to tell us about the movies--and ourselves. As long as there have been feature movies there have been marriage movies, and yet Hollywood has always been cautious about how to label them--perhaps because unlike any other genre of film, the marriage movie resonates directly with the experience of almost every adult coming to see it. Here is "happily ever after"--except when things aren't happy, and when "ever after" is abruptly terminated by divorce, tragedy, or even murder. With her large-hearted understanding of how movies--and audiences--work, Basinger traces the many ways Hollywood has tussled with this tricky subject, explicating the relationships of countless marriages from Blondie and Dagwood to the heartrending couple in the Iranian A Separation, from Coach and his wife in Friday Night Lights to Tracy and Hepburn to Laurel and Hardy (a marriage if ever there was one). A treasure trove of insight and sympathy, illustrated with scores of wonderfully telling movies stills, posters, and ads"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.